The Green Herring said:
Here's my second published FDA, which is, once again, on a huge level -- except, uh, this one went way faster than I thought it would. Why? Watch the demo to find out!

Heh, I was granted the opposite of extremes. My first try lasts 47:48, without deaths, and ends with me quitting in a dead-end situation. I use a teleporter and then can't get back to the the rest of the level because of the position of the central raising and lowering mechanism, which locks me out.

The Green Herring said:When I saw that dew posted a Pacifist demo for Chris Wright's Dagobah level, I decided to record an FDA, and then do a UV max demo on it. Until I record the max demo, here is my FDA.

... (from accompanying text file)...

I'd love to provide constructive criticism for this level, but with the way Chris reacts to /any review of his levels at all,/ I'm afraid it would fall on deaf ears

Hi Eric,

Well I just watched your demo and it was pretty exciting stuff, so if you tell me Dagobah is boring and pointless I will have a tough time believing you -- but please give me your constructive criticism.

Bear in mind that as per /newstuff 352 page 5, I am aware of the issue of prudent players being able to take some of my maps apart methodically. This will be addressed in future maps.

Well I just watched your demo and it was pretty exciting stuff, so if you tell me Dagobah is boring and pointless I will have a tough time believing you -- but please give me your constructive criticism.

Bear in mind that as per /newstuff 352 page 5, I am aware of the issue of prudent players being able to take some of my maps apart methodically. This will be addressed in future maps.

~Chris

Okay. The first obvious thing to deal with is that the level in general needs more height variation. It could be a bit more interesting if the path you need to take through the level wasn't restricted to a single, flat plane. Similarly, the level is entirely linear, but that wouldn't be a problem if there were more traps, and if the traps themselves were far more dangerous. The only one you have in there is a single "door opens behind you" trap that releases a single revenant. You could also include teleport traps — in essence, a tripwire or switch opens an off-screen door that allows a group of monsters in an off-screen room to enter the room you're in, who are awakened by the player's gunfire in the room they're connected to. The player would be able to prevent them from appearing, though, unless they were required to set off a gunfire switch, or they were required to kill enemies to get through a doorway or tunnel — thus rousing up the off-screen monsters. For optimal results, all of the monster storage rooms should be connected to the same room, and all teleport lines must be placed on the side facing toward the player, since that's where the enemies will be moving when they wake up. In addition, you ought to try giving each monster their own room, a bit larger than they are, and make the door and its teleport line take up half of the room diagonally, but you need to make sure that the door doesn't overlap the monster and that they have room to cross the line.

Also, you should pick a texture theme and stick with it. Every single room in the level has a different theme, which is more than a bit jarring. As I implied in the text file, the name "Dagobah" implies a swamp, bayou, or forest, as the Star Wars planet of the same name — which I assume is the source of the title — has all three in abundance. It'd be difficult to depict one of these with the stock Doom II textures, but that's something to keep in mind.

Overall, if you take my advice, I wouldn't mind playing the level again. Sorry it took so long to post this.

Anyway, here's an FDA I recorded today as part of my continuation of Maikl's journey through idgames/levels/doom/. I recorded FDAs of other levels as well, but I wanted to post this one in particular, in order to call attention to the level's existence, because the level is contained in an .ARJ file, meaning you can't find this level through the HTML frontend. I used the extended demo format for this one, so if you have the WAD file in your PrBoom+ directory, all you need to do is to load the demo.

Here's a FDA on uacultra. It went fine until I reached a map with some lava where I died, because it was so confusing I didn't know where to go and jumped on lava without seeing the teleporters thingy were covered by some pillars with the exact same color texture as walls... Ugh.

As usual, I then died over and over as I got frustrated, went faster, died faster, and so on, so once you see the first death it's not worth watching further.

FDAs for Marble Blood (that you can find in /newstuff Chronicles #367). Most tries are about 15-20 minutes long, most are complevel 2 unless specified otherwise. I don't reach the exit on Map06, Map09 and Map10.

First attempt on Suspended in Dusk. Made it to third map and was killed by a zombieman :D Not terribly good playing. Got lost in the first map for no good reason for several minutes. I also punch an archvile to death without berserk in first map as I missed the room with weapons and ammo.

Recorded on Zdoom as this is not a demo that needs to be playable in future anyway.

Another one for the softcore crowd. ;)
I failed to find anything special with -skipsec 430. What was "the magnificent act of misfortune"?
And why does the player's view shakes sideways several times in the beginning, e.g. at 0:35 and 0:59?

Three noclipping fireballs in row to my front and lucky barrel behind is a quite funny death, isn't it? :)

why does the player's view shakes sideways several times in the beginning

The reason of that slowdowns is an expensive USB laser mouse (G5), connected to relatively weak hardware on BX chipset with external USB 2.0 controller. I forget to close some internet applications before I start the game. So later I used pause for switching to desktop and do it.

Another one for the softcore crowd.

I don't like this megawad too much until now (MAP08). Had some fun in FDA surviving, but it's all. Maps in general are obscure, monotonous and contains nazis everywhere. MAP07 is shitty trash.
But may be later maps are better?